Wittgenstein's Lolita and The Iceman

by William Gay, J.M. White (Afterword)

Gay maps out a landscape of love and death, exploring the terrain where a person's love of life interacts with their fear of the dark unknown. He portrays a character looking for love that reaches beyond death--with occasional morbid consequences.

Genres: Short Stories, Southern Gothic, Southern, Fiction

72 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2006

About the author

William Elbert Gay was the author of the novels Provinces of Night, The Long Home, and Twilight and the short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. He was the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

so people have been telling me and telling me to read WILLIAM* gay, and until now, i just haven't. what is wrong with me, i wonder?? because he is everything i love, if this one short story is any indication of his themes and style. he does what i like, and he does it very well.

yeah, i'm reviewing another short story, what of it?? this seems to be the week for that sort of behavior. and this is the last one from me, i promise. no more cheapening of goodreads.com.this book also contains a portion of a forthcoming novel by gay, which i did not read, but which i will when it is published in its entirety, and a brief biographical bit that i did read. so there.

the story itself is so emotionally cauterizing. it involves two damaged individuals; neighbors who come together for comfort from their sorrowful lives. each scene is a gem of careful prose, without any of those pesky transitional elements, so occasionally the reader has to stop and say "wait- where are we now??" time passes, but it passes offtext, and we only get the moments when the characters are together, or in rideout's solitary, reflective moments.

obviously, there is a jarring incident at the end, which redefines the characters' relationship to each other, and after which a decision of some sort will have to be made. like any good short story, there is a unresolved ending, and since i'm not the kinda asshole that tells the whole plot of things, this is all i'm gonna say about that.

but william gay - yeah, man! i am going to go out and get all his books asap. the biographical bit was great - local boy makes good and returns to smalltown lifestyle afterward. it is perfect, and i think it makes his dialogue more authentic. i am loving all over him right now.

incidentally, he is also a painter, and painted this cover. that part i love less. stop painting, gay, and write me some more dark southern prose!

(you drunkos, you...)

come to my blog!

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an awfully short "book" that contains one short story, one fragment from an unnamed upcoming novel, and five pages of biographical material about author William Gay, who also painted the book's cover. "Wittgenstein's Lolita" is the short story which doesn't appear to have been published elsewhere although those who have read Gay's other published short stories will recognize similarities to "A Death in the Woods" from I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories. "The Iceman" is the snippet from an unpublished novel, although it feels a bit rough and more likely never became anything. The five pages of biographical material is worth reading mostly because Gay was fairly reclusive and there is not a lot of background material available about him. As always, Gay's prose alone is worthwhile reading but this extremely brief collection will mostly be of interest to fans and completists.

[Kaveh Rezaie · Rating 5 out of 5]

دو داستان از ویلیام گی.
لولیتای ویتگنشتاین - یخ فروش.
و عجب داستان‌هایی بودند...درخشان...
فضای داستان اولی من را یاد مقداری از حال و هوای یکی از داستان‌های براتیگان انداخت...

ترجمه بسیار عالی.

[Ned · Rating 4 out of 5]

These were two excellent short stories and an afterward about this most enigmatic author who produced too little art and died too soon. It makes him all the more mysterious, with those lost single copies of novels in the mail. Gay's prose is original, fresh, often terrifying as the tragic comes out of nowhere. He understands loneliness and the smells and feel of the outdoors, as his oddly composed characters wander and ponder about. This was a short book that I selfishly chose to increase my numbers (I won't reach my GR goal this year, though close, a fact which belies my OCD and results driven mentality to an embarrassing extent). But it did force me to read this author again, I have one more of his before I exhaust the repertoire and he is but a memory to me. I would recommend this as an example of fine short storytelling.

Story one is about a man who's wife is gone and the rural neighbor is a battered wife - the relationship ensues and the ending is a shattered bloody mess. Up to that point the author traces his loneliness to his past, and his brooding present drives him to reluctant action.

Story two is (apparently) a homeless young man who helps load a truck with 50 pound bags of ice and accepts as part of payment a ride from the "Iceman" - said driver is trying to recollect a prior evening of blacked-out drunkenness and seems characteristically sinister as an old southerner. Ultimately an accident jars the driver to recollection of a murder of a young girl he committed, and said homeless lad sprints away, looking back and down from high atop Appalachia. This one reminded me of a side trip in Tennessee when driving my daughter to her new home in VA this fall, when I got off the main drag and had to climb precarious roads, often single-laned and steep, and the terror that I had to fight back. This story brought it back, as great writing tends to do.

[Elia · Rating 4 out of 5]

وقتی این کتاب رو خوندم دنبالِ بیماری‌های روحی کراکترا بودم بیشتر!
خوشم اومده بود تقریبا از کتاب، ولی نه خیلی!

ولی از دید متفاوتی که توی جلسه پاتوق کسب کردم خیلی خوشم اومد و خوشحالم:))
مثلا فهمیدم که ادبیاتِ این کتاب ادبیات جنوبه!
و به همین‌علته که ترجمش سخت و خوندنش سخته!
منتها ما عادت کردیم به خوندنِ کتابای راحت،
و به قول یکی از بچه‌ها: ما کتاب می‌خونیم و دنبال ادبیات هستیم تا چیزی بهمون اضافه بشه و عیارمون بالا بره!...
پس باید چیزهای سخت هم خوند:)

[Shaun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gay didn't publish his first book until later in life. Sadly, he died not long after, leaving as his legacy a handful of beautifully written novels and short stories.

Wittgenstein's Lolita and The Iceman contains two short stories by the same names that are as beautifully written as his other works. A must read for his fans.

[Doug H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two short stories, both featuring woman-battering. I love William Gay but I think any of the short stories in I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories are stronger than either of these. Just being honest.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“With the dim light behind her and her red hair unbraided all down her back she looked like a fairytale princess a few years past happily ever after who’d rethought her position and gone over to the dark side.”

Can William Gay write a story I don’t want to read over and over?

[Mohaaaamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

"لولیتا" را نخوانده ام. "ویتگنشتاین" را نمی شناسم.
معهذا میتوانم به عیان "لولیتای ویتگنشتاین" را درک کنم، دختری معصوم، سردرگم و مرارت کشیده.
برایم کتابِ "دیروز" را تداعی میکند؛ مثلث هایی عشقی که به واسطه ی سندهای مستطیلیِ ازدواج، ما را مابین دایره های ذهنی محصور نگاه می دارند.
چه کسی قربانی است؟
به لحاظ روانشناختی، اینچنین بیان می‌گردد که: شخصی که از زندگی مشترک خود به ستوه آمده و بنا به هر علت رغبتی برای تداوم رابطه اش ندارد و ناچارا تن به رابطه ای خارجی میدهد،شخصِ قربانی؛ طرف دیگر رابطه که خواسته یا ناخواسته،مُستَدَل یا نامستدل،موجبات دل سیر گردیدن همسر خود از رابطه را فراهم آورده، شخصِ آزاردهنده؛ و شخصِ ثالث که مسبب فروپاشی آن رابطه است، شخص نجات دهنده نامیده می‌شود.
اما به زعم من هر سه قربانی اند.
هر سه چیزی را در خود قربانی میکنند و سزاوار ترحم اند.
یکی شرافت و وجدانش را
یکی تعهدش را
و در نهایت یکی هم همه ی زندگی اش را
با همه ی این توصیفات، قربانی اصلی چه کسی است؟
مسبب اصلی را می‌شود تعیین نمود؟
کدام یک اخلاق را به حراج گذاشته است؟
دستیابی به پاسخ،در صورت وجود، دشوار می‌نماید.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are two very good short stories in true William Gay fashion. I'm still saying The Paperhanger is my favorite short story by Gay. However, anyway you slice it, he knows how to write and draw the reader into his creations.

[Wiebke (1book1review) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot highlight enough how much I enjoy the author's writing. I can't put it into proper words, but I always feel transported into a desolate darkness of ordinary people.

[ExtraGravy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wanted more Wittgenstein. Two good stories, the Iceman was unexpected and my favorite.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the heels of news this week that the publishing rights to Gay's two remaining unpublished works had been bought with the intent to publish next year, I decided to knock out this short two story collection I had held back for such a time as this.

The title track (calling it such in respect to Gay's love of music) is pure his best stuff. Landscape, violence, crossed love, circumstance, and how the Hell did we get here. I loved it. The second was a snippet from the then soon to market novel that since his death has been postponed (with no real hope of it coming to market until this weeks' news). While still certainly of his style, it worked less for me as it seemed to be part of something bigger he was developing.

My favorite metaphor within these two was that of the main character in the first story when he ever so smartly drew the link between him and his gut shot dog that started the entire chain of events. I barely caught it as it was subtle but upon seeing what he did I just smiled. Such a clever devil.

The afterward was very interesting. Not to be missed by any other Gay fans. To think that this man sent countless unpublished single copy manuscripts (novels included) to only be rejected and lost to the world including Gay himself almost nauseates me......but that's part of what made Gay so uniquely himself.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine story (Lolita) which fans of William Gay’s shorter prose will appreciate

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Language, language, language!

What a wonder it is to read William Gay’s work! And you are guaranteed to be immersed in the action, the scene, and the characters. Wittgenstein is a Marvelously satisfying love story. Iceman is a bold vignette into a young man’s encounter with a disconcerting and dangerous drunk. There is a rumor that Gay’s final posthumous novel will be published early next summer.

[Jaide Monroe · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. William Gay has amazing writing, albeit a bit confusing at times; I had to reread some sentences a couple of times. The imagery Gay creates strikes some nostalgic cord within me, reaching back to my childhood-self who lived in the Appalachia.

I will definitely be checking out more books in this deep, muddy vein that is the poor folk tangled in the sticks.

[Mahbod Kahnamouei · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتاب متشکل از دو داستان کوتاهه. لولیتای ویتگنشتاین و یخ‌فروش. شاید اولی رو بشه یه ناولا به حساب آورد. اما دومی از اساس داستان کوتاهه. جفت‌شون هم روایی‌ان از دل زندگی. آروم‌. بی‌رمق. پر از حاشیه و اتفاقات عجیب و سرسام‌آور.
ترجمه‌ی خوبی هم داره و دین متن در برگردان فارسی به خوبی ادا شده.

[LeastTorque · Rating 4 out of 5]

These two stories might not be my favorite works by this author, but it matters not. It is William Gay.

[Ben Gibson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I’m just functionally illiterate but I don’t understand the meaning behind either of these stories

[Daniel Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is interesting to ponder what William Gay was thinking when he titled and wrote these two stories, and joined them in a thin publication.
Ludwig Wittgenstein is considered by some to be the foremost philosopher of the twentieth century. Cormac McCarthy held him in awe. Cormac and William had discussions. Wittgenstein and his magnum opus Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus probably came up. Likely Gay read David Markson’s 1988 novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress, and Vladimir Nabokov’s 1989 novel Lolita.
In Wittgenstein’s Lolita, the older Rideout is taken with and taken in so to speak by the younger Rebekah Faust. (a Faustian bargain?) Her husband Albert may have killed Rideout’s dog. Albert beats Rebekah. He once was but is no longer a nice man. Rebekah is Rideout’s Lolita. Over time, they bare their souls to each other. All cards face-up. When she was younger she read Nabakov’s Lolita. She studied and admired Wittgenstein. She wanted to be “Wittgenstein’s Lolita.” She wants to be loved by somebody so much that even death does not end it. Which puts Rideout under great tension. And has the reader asking, What just happened? Where is Albert? And Rideout: ride out where? Beyond death?
Then comes the second story, The Iceman. An ice delivery man is drunk, elicits a boy to pack the ice in sawdust and ride with him to deliver the ice. The iceman drifts off, hits a horse-drawn wagon, his truck goes down a ravine, he "wakes up" and recalls he killed a girl the night prior. Likely Gay read Eugene Oneill’s The Iceman Cometh, it has bar drunkards and a traveling salesmen who reveals his wife did not die, he killed her.
What joins these two stories is death and dreams. Life is but a dream? Wittgenstein is inaccessible to most. But he had seven introductory “statements.” One of them, simplified: Reality is comprised of facts. Facts describe things we know (our world) but also things we do not know. Maybe William Gay’s thoughts were along these lines?

[Adam Nevill · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Gay’s two story (plus a short essay) chapbook, WITTGENSTEIN’S LOLITA & THE ICEMAN is wonderful and worth collecting. Sadly departed, but what a master he was. I thought these two stories were as good as just about anything in the superb, I HATE TO SEE THAT EVENING SUN GO DOWN.

Right from the opening paragraph, the quality of the authorial voice assured me that I was in for a treat, and I was.

[From Wittgenstein’s Lolita]: “Through a deep blue dusk that fell at the very end of a season of ruin he came up past the landscape of ruin itself. Looming palely out of a coming dark were statuary, birdbaths, Madonnas, unarmed Venuses, capering cherubim, shapeless shapes past all indentifying. The yard as it climbed toward the yellowlit house at its summit looked like a dumping ground for sculptors, the repository for misbegotten art that resulted from clumsy hands, hangovers, dementia praecox. A yard sale from the attic of a madhouse.”

[Dr. Jon Pirtle · Rating 5 out of 5]

If southern gothic literature is to your liking, William Gay's fiction is for you. Lonesome, hard-living, booze-swilling loners, living hand-to-mouth, scarred, scared, and yet still longing for love, this fiction is filled with characters and dramas and language that satisfies as much as do the fictional worlds of O'Connor, or Faulkner, or McCarthy. And fictional worlds do not get more profound than that.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my introduction to William Gay. Although I was not enamored with his violent sensibility, I was very taken with the sensibility of his prose which, at least in these two stories, is very different. His writing conveys a deep sense of alienation from the world along with an attraction to nature. I found an unusual beauty in his prose.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though it was through a story that I first found Gay, I've grown to prefer his longer work. His tremendous vocabulary and range show up in both forms, but the shorter works don't (can't?) convey the emotional spectrum we need in order to make sense of the violence that, with Gay, always appears.

[Phil reading_fastandslow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve spent enough time with Southern Gothic fiction to be able to say “definitively” that William Gay reigns supreme. Wittgenstein’s Lolita and The Iceman (two short stories) demonstrate what separates Gay from the literary descendants of Faulkner who crowd the tradition. He fuses so many angles of Southern identity into something hypnotic, weirdly relatable and distinctly American without losing emotional immediacy in the process. Biblical cadence, philosophical inquiry, blues mythology, noir atmosphere, rural decay, a contemporary setting that still feels timeless…all of these come together in a vivid and mythological gestalt.

What keeps that mythology from becoming airless is that his prose, dense as it is, stays intensely cinematic. The sentences are elaborate, but the scenes move visually, like a new camera angle: wide shots of desolate Tennessee roads, close attention to a hand or a face, firelight sliding across a room, silhouettes emerging from darkness before identity is revealed. In “The Iceman” especially, scenes unfold through lighting, gesture, and sound before any explanation arrives. Even when Gay drifts into the metaphysical or the dreamlike, the reader can still see the room, the highway, the rain, the bottle on the table. He has the lyrical prose-poetry of Faulkner or McCarthy, but is also grounded in the real world modern southern experience like Larry Brown.

The collection is short enough to read in an afternoon. For anyone who wants to understand what Southern Gothic can do at its best, this is a great place to start.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The nature of violence in Gay's work is so different from that in other southern literature - and his love of stories is so deep that it can't be appreciated enough. I really love his writing - the man was an absolute treasure.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gay is a fantastic writer. I can't read enough of his work.

[John B Gajan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth reading

My introduction to William Gay. Two short stories that have left me seeking more of this late blossoming artist and poet

[Mohamad · Rating 4 out of 5]

خوانش در زمان جنگ و قطعی اینترنت

[Jessica]

Left me wanting more.